Football Champ (2 page)

TROY FELT THE RUMBLE
of the big car’s engine and caught a whiff of exhaust.

“None of your business,” Seth said.

“You don’t think so?” Peele asked.

“I got a plane to catch, too,” Kenny Albert said. “Good luck next week, Seth.”

“You in on this?” Peele asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kenny said. “Write that.”

Troy heard the door shut.

An angry fist banged on the trunk as the car began to roll away.

“Maybe I will,” Peele shouted. “Maybe that’s just what I’ll write.”

The car picked up speed, made a couple of turns, and
slowed. Then it swerved and sped faster, with the police siren wailing ahead of it.

When they finally came to a stop and the trunk sprang open, Troy heard the roar of planes taking off. He climbed out and wrinkled his nose at the smell of jet fuel. The cop car drove away, and Kenny popped out of the limo with his garment bag.

“That Peele’s kind of a jerk,” Kenny said, “trying to hassle you just because of Seth.”

“Seth?” Troy said, stretching his legs.

“He never told you?” Kenny asked.

Troy shook his head.

“I have to run to catch my plane,” Kenny said, “but walk with me and I’ll tell you.”

“I’m meeting my mom at the Delta desk,” Troy said.

“It’s right near where I’m going,” Kenny said. “Come on.”

Troy walked alongside the announcer.

“My producer knew Peele from college,” Kenny said. “Peele was actually a player, or he tried to be.”

“Where?” Troy asked.

“Marist.”

“That’s where Seth played.”

“I know,” Kenny said, passing through the airport doors. “Seth had a scholarship, but Peele walked on to try to make the team as a receiver. One day in training camp, Peele came across the middle on a crossing pattern. It was a clean hit, but Seth basically ended his career.”

“His career?” Troy said, hustling alongside the announcer.

“Not that he really had one,” Kenny said, showing the woman at the security line his ID and boarding pass. “Except in his own mind. But Seth hit him so hard, Peele’s helmet flew off. The mask cut his lip and he still has a scar.”

“Wow,” Troy said. “Seth’s a hard hitter.”

“No one knows if Peele tried to get the job in Atlanta because of that, but ever since he got it, he’s written bad things about Seth every chance he’s had,” Kenny said, taking his ID back from the ticket agent. “It got really nasty at the end of last season when Seth was having a bad time with his knees. I don’t know if you read any of it.”

“Yeah, but who cares what some guy writes?” Troy said. “Peele never even made it in college football.”

“It hurts,” Kenny said. “Plus, it can cost you money. Teams read that stuff. It almost cost Seth his job, to be honest.”

The line started to move.

“Well, buddy, I’m heading in,” Kenny said. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Troy said, “the desk is right there. Thanks for the ride.”

“Next time you’ll ride up front, with me,” Kenny said, giving Troy a wink as he headed for the metal detector.

Troy watched the announcer for a second, then turned and searched for his mom, but he didn’t see her. He swam the length of the Delta desk through a sea of travelers, scanning their faces but seeing no sign of his mom. He looked up at the monitor. The clock in the corner said 8:23. Troy knew the team’s charter flight was scheduled to take off at 8:30. He bit into his lip and swiveled his head from side to side the way he did when he played quarterback and the other team blitzed him. If he couldn’t find his mom, he had no idea what he’d do.

He looked at the clock: 8:25. He began to run back and forth like a mouse caught in a cage.

There was no sign of his mother anywhere.

From within the packed crowd of people, a hand shot out, snatched his parka, and jerked him to a stop.

Startled, Troy looked up into the angry red face of a man with thinning blond hair and blue eyes. From one nostril of his sharp nose extended a white scar that tugged at his delicate pink lip.

“Who are you?” Troy asked, trying to break the grip that only got tighter.

SHARP INCISOR TEETH SHOWED
themselves in a mean smile as the man said, “I’m Brent Peele with the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. Who are you?”

Peele emerged from the crowd, tall and thin like a crane bird, with pants short enough to show the black socks he wore with his sneakers.

“How’d you get here?” Troy asked, unable to contain the question.

“I’m a reporter,” Peele said. “I’ve got my ways.”

Dipping his face down toward Troy’s, he asked, “So, how is it you help the Falcons steal the other team’s plays?”

“What are you talking about?” Troy said. He looked around for help but saw only fast-moving adults in overcoats hurrying for their planes.

“This team makes a turnaround too good to be true,” Peele said, squinting, “and it
is
too good to be true. Same thing goes for Halloway. He was washed up last year, and all of a sudden people are talking Pro Bowl. He’s no faster or stronger, same broken-down knees, but now he’s always in the right place at the right time. Gee, how does that happen?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Troy said, squirming to get away.

“Do you read the coaches’ lips?” Peele asked. “What, you hack into the frequency on their quarterback radio?”

“You’re nuts,” Troy said.

“Where’s your father?” Peele asked, looking around without loosening his grip.

Troy’s throat tightened. He had no father, not one he knew, anyway. His mother didn’t talk much about the man who had abandoned them before Troy was born. This left Troy with a vague feeling of hatred for his father, but what bothered him even more was the contradictory feeling of wanting to one day find the man and impress him. So disturbing were these feelings that even the mention of his father by a stranger—someone he didn’t even care about—cut Troy deep.

“Leave me alone!” Troy shouted.

“Easy now,” Peele said, softening his voice. “You’re just a kid. You’re not doing anything wrong here, but the team is. I know just what they’re doing, trying to
keep people from suspecting by using a kid.”

“You’re crazy,” Troy said, loud enough to make a few people glance at him on their way past.

“Not quite,” Peele said, lowering his voice even more, “and if you keep shouting, someone’s going to call the police. I don’t have a problem with that. I’m a reporter after a story. What’s your explanation going to be?”

“It’s a free country,” Troy said.

“Not for kids,” Peele said.

“Okay, okay,” Troy said, going limp. “I’ll take you to my dad. I’m supposed to meet him at the American Airlines desk.”

“American?” Peele said, frowning. “That’s in another terminal.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Troy said, raising his shoulders before dropping them.

“Come on,” Peele said. “This way.”

Troy let the reporter steer him toward an escalator, riding it down with him. All the while Troy studied the signs to remember where everything was. Peele took him through a tunnel and up another set of escalators to the platform for the train that ran to the American Airlines terminal.

“You want to tell me how much they’re paying you?” Peele asked, his tone smooth and oily.

Troy shrugged and said, “My dad will know.”

“You live in Atlanta?” Peele asked as the train groaned into the station. Its doors banged open, and a
computerized voice told everyone to get on.

“Not really,” Troy said, quickly taking a seat facing the doors.

Peele sat down next to him but kept a hand on the right sleeve of Troy’s parka. Troy unzipped the coat and wormed his left arm out of its sleeve.

The instant the doors beeped and started to shut, Troy stamped on the arch of Peele’s foot, flew out of the parka, and launched himself toward the closing doors.

TROY DIDN’T STOP TO WATCH
the train. He sprinted down the escalator and back through the tunnel into the Delta terminal and up again to the counter, turning this way and that in search of his mom.

He walked the length of the counter and had just started back toward the other end when he heard his name above the noise of the crowded terminal. He spun and saw a hand waving frantically above people’s heads.

“Mom!” he shouted.

She broke through the mob and hugged him tight. “Are you okay?”

Troy glanced at the clock: 8:42.

“The plane,” he said. “Did it wait?”

“Maybe. Are you okay?”

“That guy grabbed me,” Troy said, explaining what happened as they sprinted, hand in hand, through the terminal.

His mom flashed him a grin when he told her about stomping on Peele’s instep and she said, “You did good.”

As soon as Troy and his mom reached the security gate, a Delta supervisor in a red blazer and a TSA agent hustled them past the line and down several back hallways until they were outside in the foggy light of the tarmac. The smell of spent fuel turned Troy’s stomach, and he plugged his ears against the scream of jet engines as they dashed across the grooved concrete. The Delta 727 charter sat by itself, away from the terminals. The team buses were chugging away, adding black clouds of diesel to the stench.

Troy pointed to the stairway being tugged free from the plane by a small tractor and said, “They’re leaving.”

His mom said nothing but dragged him toward the tail of the plane, where a narrow set of stairs still remained, like a forgotten toilet paper streamer. They dashed for the stairs, but with about twenty feet to go, the steps began to slowly retract into the tail of the plane. Troy’s mom shouted and grabbed for the railing.

A flight attendant hollered something at her from inside the plane above them.

“We’re with the team!” Troy’s mom shouted.

The flight attendant’s mouth dropped open. She pushed a different button and the stairs began to grind back down. Troy’s mom leaped up the steps, and he followed.

“I’m sorry,” the flight attendant said. “I thought we were supposed to leave without you.”

“The terminal was swamped,” Troy’s mom said.

Seth was sitting only a couple seats from the back, wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a white button-down shirt. The other players around him, big men who spilled over the edges of their seats and into the aisle, were already playing cards with one another. Seth set down his Coke and hustled into the galley, where Troy and his mom stood.

“Peele thinks we’re stealing the other teams’ plays when they make their calls,” Troy said.

“Peele probably thinks he can win himself a Pulitzer Prize if he breaks a story and convinces people we’re stealing plays,” Seth said. “And if he can somehow ruin me in the process, all the better for him. The guy hates me.”

Troy said in a soft voice, “But we’re not cheating. Why can’t we just tell Peele it’s me? That I know the plays from watching what they did before. That there’s a pattern. Tell him it’s the same thing that every team does with computers when they study game film to learn the other teams’ tendencies? Tell him I’m like this football ‘genius.’”

“He’ll laugh,” his mom said. “He’s not going to believe us.”

“I can
show
him,” Troy said, his face growing warm. “No one believes me until I show them.”

“Except that Mr. Langan wants this to stay quiet, remember?” Seth said. “That’s part of the deal. If he knows Peele is on to us, he might just shut the whole thing down.”

The pilot’s voice came on the loudspeaker and told everyone to find their seats and buckle in because they were cleared for takeoff.

Troy’s mom said, “I better get up there with the rest of the staff. I won’t say anything until we get a chance to talk more after we land.”

Even though Troy’s mom and Seth were a serious couple, they tried not to let anyone on the team—players or front office people—know about it. Troy’s mom had gotten the job with the team on her own, before she even knew Seth, and she didn’t want people to think anything different. So she sat up with the rest of the team’s front office employees. Troy, however, as a “ball boy” and well liked by everyone, got to sit in the players’ section.

“We can’t let Peele stop us,” Troy said to Seth after his mom had gone and the two of them sat in their own row, with an empty seat between them. “We can make the playoffs if we keep going. That’s what everyone wants, especially Mr. Langan.”

“They want that, yes,” Seth said, “but they don’t want trouble to come along with it.”

“I thought teams did anything to win,” Troy said.

“Some do,” Seth said, “but not Mr. Langan. He doesn’t have to win. He wants to win, but it’s not going to make or break him if we do or don’t. What he doesn’t want is anything to hurt his reputation. That’s even more important to him than winning.”

“How would I hurt his reputation?” Troy asked, buckling his seat belt as the plane lurched forward. “What if I can prove to Peele that what we’re doing isn’t wrong?”

Troy remembered a time when no one except his grandfather believed him. It was only after he proved he could predict what plays the other team would run that the Falcons had let him help them win their last several games.

“No. I’m sorry, Troy. People will twist this around,” Seth said as they rolled toward the runway. “Especially someone like Peele.”

Troy clamped his mouth shut tight, thinking about what Seth said. The plane’s engines began to roar. They lifted off the ground and an air pocket buffeted them sideways. Troy’s stomach flipped, and he dug his fingers into the armrest of his seat.

“But he can’t say it’s wrong when it isn’t,” Troy finally said. “I’m not doing anything wrong!”

“Buddy,” Seth said, looking over at him with a funny
smile, “welcome to the NFL. They don’t have to write the truth. They just want to sell papers. As soon as Peele can prove you’re involved with calling the defensive plays, he’ll be able to blow it up into a huge scandal. It’ll be ten times worse than that mess with the Patriots filming the Rams’ practice before the Super Bowl. No one is going to believe you can do what we know you can do. The damage will be done before the real truth ever comes out. It’ll be the end for you, me, my career, and probably your mom’s job, too.”